The Analysis of a Doll Phobia1

From the complex fabric of a case, only material relevant to the patient's phobia for dolls will be extracted. This too will, of necessity, be much condensed, and only the main streams indicated. The phobic symptom was greatly overdetermined, which accounted for its tenacity and long duration. The doll can be pictured as the hub of a wheel. From the hub there radiate outwards numerous spokes, each representing an origin, a motive, a cause, or an historical determinant feeding into the hub doll. The various spokes also have interconnecting links, in irregular fashion, joining the various parts together into a network.

The phobia had existed for as long as the patient could remember, at least from his fifth year. What finally brought him into analysis at the age of 38 was an article in Life magazine to the effect that the age for analysis was up to forty. The patient, who had considered treatment on and off for many years, was finally confronted with a deadline. At 38, figuring a few years for the analysis, he could just make it. This turned out, as could be predicted, to be a deep-rooted character trait of his.

It was interesting, through the eyes of a man who feared them, to discover how ubiquitous dolls are in our culture. When one chooses an object for a phobia, he in a sense becomes married to the object. In order to avoid it, his eyes seek it out. He finds it in obscure places, he sees it with his peripheral vision. The patient was afraid of any kind of three-dimensional figure, of dolls with which children play, of manikins, of window-dummies used for display purposes, of puppets, of pieces of sculpture, of various objets d'art in the form of figurines. An ash-tray or a lamp base might be carved as a figure, a bar of soap might be fashioned in the form of a little animal. Any such object was a threat, was his enemy, and provoked anxiety.

Gradually certain conditions or qualifying characteristics emerged which were of special importance, and which d